Review - Icemat & Intellimouse Bundle - Glass Mousemat & Optical Mouse

Reviews - Icemat & Intellimouse Bundle - Glass Mousemat & Optical Mouse

"One day, all mice will be made like this. One day they will all glide over

the cashmere carpet that is the IceMat. Friction free for superior performance."

Forty pounds for a mouse mat! Have you gone absolutely, positively mad? I got mine for a fiver, its got a calculator, a wrist pad and a picture of a cute bunny rabbit on it.

"You sad strange little person" you smirk back at your rather unsophisticated amigo. For you have just purchased the IceMat; The most advanced friction-free surface a mouse can glide along. (short of the brown furry type sliding down a golden banister at Buckingham)... But its forty pounds!

Wrong. For the forty coins you have to shell out for the IceMat bundle you also get the Microsoft Intellimouse 3.0 which retails at around £30 anyway. So essentially we have a £10 mouse mat. Sounds a little more reasonable, but can you justify spending that on a glass mouse mat?

Here is a quick test for you. Get up and shuffle along to your computer. Now, place your hand on your computer mouse, as if you were going to use it. Exert a tiny amount of pressure on the mouse as if you were to move it to the right. Its not moving, try a tiny bit more, more and BANG! It will jolt to the right by a few millimetres. You never noticed it before, because you take the friction on a mouse mat for granted. With the IceMat the very slightest bit of pressure will send it moving in the required direction. But don't get us wrong, this doesn't mean that the mouse is uncontrollable, slipping and sliding everywhere. On the contrary, the control of the mouse on the IceMat is exceptional you will have no problems what-so-ever whether you want to move the cursor by 1 pixel or across the length of the entire screen.

Another quick demonstration of how utterly shameful your mouse setup is. Put your head sideways onto your mouse mat - as if you were going to kiss the side of your mouse. Now quickly (before your significant other walks in and thinks you completely infatuated with you computer) blow! Blow onto the side of your mouse and see if you can move it. Did it work? Probably not, and even if it did you may want to sit down for a few hours to regain a moral breathing practise. These things sound silly and we don't blame you if you didn't even do them (no gold star for you!) but it demonstrates how inefficient mice, and the mats they ride on are at positioning. The sole purpose of a mouse is to position a pointer, yet you have been using a mouse that isn't up to the job for years now. Would you put up with a car for years if it didn't drive properly? a TV if it didn't display pictures properly? Of course not! So it seems not only justifiable but critically needed for all our homes and workplaces.

And that's another preconception that some may have with spending £10 on a mouse mat; Its only useful for hardcore-shootem'up gamers. While the gaming community (simulation and shootem'up) can clearly benefit from the added control of the IceMat, so too can the professional user.

We demonstrated how the IceMat improves pointer accuracy, now imagine what it could do for your CAD or art programs. Logically thinking, it seems impossible to conceive that professionals whose business is accuracy aren't using the IceMat. £10 to an architect handling thousand pounds worth of plans is nothing for the added accuracy and ease of design that this package brings.

But surely the £2.99 glass chopping board from the high street will do the same? Intriguing question, so we put it to the test. Could a glass chopping board rival the IceMat? Unsuprisingly no. The build quality of the IceMat is oustandingly high. The surfaace is extraorginarly matte. The glass chopping board however is almost grainy, conveying the same feeling of moving a mouse across the surface of your desk. The IceMat is also suprisingly conformatbe to the bottom on your palm, its easy to clean and has a good weight to it aswell.

There you were thinking that if mice could dream the'd be picturing a nice hunk of cheddar. Tut tut. Every mouse dreams of the IceMat short and simple. Exceptional build quality and pointing clarity that you clearly require for adequate operation of a computer (That's the bit you tell your boss or partner when they look at you funnnily and don't answer your calls)